Friday, April 1, 2011

Foolin' Around

“Your son has something he wants to tell you,” WonderWife™ said on the other end of the phone in my office.

A rustling noise was followed by a sheepish voice that said, “Daddy?”

“What’s up, buddy?”

“The dentist said I didn’t brush my teeth very well and I have a cavity.”

As the parent who is responsible for overseeing teeth brushing half of the time, my first thought was: Crap. Parenting fail.

It was still for a beat before the Bean shouted, “April Fools!”

I smiled because he totally got me.

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I love a good April Fools joke. And the internet has made April Fools an incredibly fun day.

Over breakfast, WonderWife™ was complaining over the discovery that Flickr had been bought by Yahoo, who added an “e” to the website’s name…until I reminder her what day it was. We proceeded to spend the morning seeing what tricks Google, YouTube, Think Geek and others had planned. There was even a great bacon related one.

As per custom, I managed to get in on the fooling myself. Though I decided to think carefully about how I went about things. (Last year's post here caused me nearly half my readership.) I decided to keep it simple. I had my father believing for a second that he and my mom weren't invited to visit us this summer and a couple of frantic calls from friends confirmed that at least a handful of people believed my Facebook status update that said WonderWife™ and I might be moving across the country. We even got into the spirit over at Culture Brats.

But my favorite prank of the day belonged to my son, because it was his first and because he executed it flawlessly.